In 2009 I was in Pittsburgh just before SuperBowl (go Steelers!) and mixed up a batch of Master Recipedough with host Jon Burnett on KDKA-TV Channel 2 (the CBS affiliate). Pittsburgh was awash in Steelers mania, and I couldn’t resist cutting a loaf of Pain d’Epi (wheat stalk bread) but calling it Pain du Football (page 41 in our book). I’m bringing this bread to a Super Bowl party because each individual roll is shaped like a football– well, something like a football. Perfect for dipping into chili in front of the game. Jon was disappointed that my baked bread was a bit stale (I’d had to bake it in Minneapolis and it was two days stale!) so he insisted on eating the RAW bread dough instead (he made me eat it too). Click here or on the video screen above to view theTV segment, this was great fun.

Have a look at Zoe’s post on Pain d’Epi(wheat stalk bread) for some nice shots of the cutting technique. Remember to cut at a very shallow angle with long-bladed shears, almost all the way through the baguette you form.

Mia: Without saying so, I did a “letter-fold” technique, which makes for the most even baguette. Zoe’s post (above) goes into that in more detail. You can skip it but then your baguettes will have knobby ends. I used to always do them that way. But for the ‘Epi, it’s nicer to get them uniform.

cool! that actually helped a lot since I just tried making a baguette out of my third batch of dough. The first two weren’t so great because I was using water that was too hot – but number 3 has great promise! So then I go online while it’s “resting” and look what I see!

I see that I don’t have to be quite so afraid to “handle” the dough just a little bit to get it into a shape. Tomorrow I shall try again

Nice vid – I was glad to see how you cut the epi *and* I realize that maybe I’m being unneccesarily a little too gentle with my dough. Maybe it comes with confidence. Love this book and all the bread I’ve made from it. I tell everyone about it!

Karen: Yeah, we give slightly problematic advice (“be gentle, but not TOO gentle!”). You get away with a little more because baguettes and pains d’epis are skinny… there’s not much weighing them down if you over-compress them a litte.

I probably wouldn’t snip off chunks. My guess is that you can get that spreading by using bread flour (or adding vital wheat gluten), which gives you more “dough strength” and therefore a stonger gluten cloak. Which will spread out more impressively.